Toy action figures are becoming increasingly popular, and are normally miniature figures having a configuration and visual appearance which represent a person, an animal or thing of an exciting nature, such as comic or movie characters, national heroes, science fiction personalities, celebrities or the like. Current action figures include articulated parts, and in the case of a human figure, articulated body parts such as arms, legs, head etc. Examples of toy action figures are shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,802,879 (Rissman et al.), and U.S. Pat. No. 4,723,931 (Allen et al).
An action figure is normally associated with a number of toy devices and accessories to provide a plurality of playing sets, which may be unique to the action figure. A player normally uses his or her imagination to interact the action figure with a playing set in a plurality of playing activities. Such playing activities are usually influenced by the player's perception of the background and personality profile of the action figure. U.S. Pat. No. 5,073,140 (Lebensfeld et al.) discloses toy action figures and detachable accessories, which incorporate audio generating apparatus.
To the knowledge of the inventor, there are no action figures, available in the market place, which can directly control or affect the operation of another toy apparatus to provide predetermined playing activities. An example of a toy apparatus which operation can be affected by interactive action figures is a remote control toy car. An action play set to modify the functionality of this remote control toy car depicts a child as an auto driver instructor, and a plurality of action figures as student drivers. Such an action play set will provide the child with hours of enjoyment through the interaction of the action figures with the toy car apparatus.